# Sample Mean Calculator

Instructions: In order to use this sample mean calculator, please provide the sample data below and this solver will provide step-by-step calculation of the sample mean:

Type the sample (comma or space separated)
Name of the variable (Optional)

The sample mean is one of the most commonly used measures of central tendency, that is used to summarize the data into one "average" value, that provides a measure of location of a distribution.

Let $$\{X_1, X_2, ..., X_n\}$$ be the sample data. The following formula is used to compute the sample mean:

$\bar X = \frac{1}{n}\sum_{i=1}^n X_i$

Example: For example, assume that the sample data is $$\{ 1, 2, 5, 8, 10\}$$, then, the sample mean is computed as follows:

$\bar X = \frac{1}{5}(1+2+5+8+10) = \frac{26}{5} = 5.2$

The sample mean is typically used as a representative measure of the center of the distribution. But, the problem with the sample mean is that it is too sensitive to extreme values. This indicates that when the distribution is significantly skewed the sample mean will tend to over-represent the skewed side. In case of skewed distributions, it is recommended to use the sample median instead as the appropriate measure of central tendency. If you need to compute all the basic descriptive measures, including sample mean, variance, standard deviation, median, quartiles, etc, you can try our descriptive statistics calculator.

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